Step 2: Front walkway and driveway fix – materials delivered

Egad, does anyone else hate the way the blogs were “improved”? The best part of reading blogs was that you could scroll down quickly to see if there was anything interesting to read. For me it was like walking through a book store and stumbling upon an interesting aisle of books. Now it’s like the bookstore is a long hallway with a series of doors and you have to open each door to see if that’s an aisle you want to visit. I don’t much like it but at least we can read blogs on our ipads and phones now (p.s. can we all stop saying smartphones, it’s like saying the World Wide Web. Just say phones. Anyone who has an old flip phone knows that cool stuff doesn’t apply to them). That was a long overdue issue. So I guess the new and improved was the only way to accomplish this. I’d better start thinking of some snappy titles and my first two sentences better kill if I’m going to keep my readership.

So in my last post you were able to see why we need to put some driveway edging in and why we need to add walkways to the 2 front doors (you’ll have to click the words Read More to actually see any photos). So here’s what I ordered:

1. Walkways – Nittenhouse slate pads (in Appalachian Gray) in the 24×24 and 12×24 sizes from Zappala Block in Rensselaer (these look like bluestone but are really concrete. If anyone asks, it’s real bluestone). They are about an inch thick so they should last. These come in different colors but I was outvoted on mixing colors (“it will look too patio-ish”) and it wasn’t a battle worth fighting.

2. Edging – Versalok standard caps (in Pebble color) from Colonie Block in Colonie. This is a bit of an unorthodox use. These blocks are supposed to be used as the cap on a wall. We’re burying them standing since they are 12 x16. We will put them about 10 inches into the ground so there will be a clear delineation between driveway and yard. Right now it’s a bad transition with the yard taking over the driveway.

3. Stone dust – got 2 loads of this from Colonie Block. Some of this will be used for the driveway and some for the walkways.

4. Driveway gravel – I’ll share what kind I used after the job is done. I’m getting it from Troy Sand and Gravel. They have a bunch of types and I’m hoping this stuff looks nice. I drove over there last week and ended up driving into the facility where cars aren’t allowed. A worker who swore alot showed me some samples (it was hilarious). I’m getting 3 loads of that gravel to repair the driveway.

5. Mini Excavator (it’s got heat)- renting this for 3 days from Country True Value in East Greenbush. They will rent just about anything. I asked if it made that annoying beeping everytime it goes into reverse and they said yes. Gulp. My neighbors are going to hate me by Thursday.

So check out the photos are report back here next week. We’re starting the work tomorrow.

Outtakes:

We lost a good friend a few weeks ago. Fred Shapiro who owed Silver Fox Salvage in Albany. The Times Union ran a really nice article on Fred. You can read it here. Fred had a great vision for reusing architectural salvage and one of my favorite things was just to go and hang out in his shop. You did good, Fred.